Conclusiones finales

Ten years is a major commitment, a large chunk of a lifespan. In Alice Gordon's case it was nearly a quarter of her allotted time that she spent in the Crowther household. The quotidian experience of ten years spent with children is measured not so much in decades but rather lived as an endlessness of three thousand or so days, and sometimes the days so long that only the hours have any meaning. Time is less a progression than an accumulation of daily repetitions and constant interactions that become etched into the interdependent relationships of their participants. The younger Crowther children knew the intimacy of the smell of Alice Gordon, the feel of her hands as she dressed and bathed them and brushed their hair. They could interpret the facial expressions and movements of body that expressed her moods, just as she grew to know the intricacies of the characters of each of her charges. 1 She, like other members of the family, would have been incorporated into their imaginative role-play. In between and during the toilet-training, dressing, feeding, mending, tidying, tending of coughs, colds, scraped knees, was an ongoing verbal interchange: whether to amuse, or chasten, or teach or just to pass the time of day. Through these actions the children would be moulded by Alice Gordon but so, too, would she be shaped by her years in the household. This time lived with the Crowthers would confer familiarity, authority and identification on Alice Gordon; her ties to the household becoming all the stronger because of the absence – or distance – of her own kin. And a decade spent with this family whose motto Carpe Diem was so energetically applied to all the opportunities that could be exploited or attained in the colony, would shape her own sense of identity, motivation and realisation of opportunity in Tasmania.

A lot of words can be exchanged in three thousand or so days. Alice Gordon would have come with her own arsenal of stories, retold from her own childhood as well as later readings and experiences. The tales told by nurses were often remembered vividly by their charges. In the nineteenth century, the Irish novelist, Lady Gregory, acknowledged

1 _{Holly Blackford refers to the 'vital emotional intercourse' of the senses and non-linguistic bodily}

communication and accommodation that are the primal qualities of experience and argues that non-verbal expression develops an eloquence among communities who are silenced. Holly Blackford, 'Vital Signs at Play: Objects as Vessels of Mother-Daughter Discourse in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women', Children's Literature 34, 2006, pp. 1-36, pp. 7, 8-9.

Mary Sheridan, her childhood nurse, as the source of many of her published stories. Leonard Woolf's nurse read him excerpts from the Baptist Times and de Quincy's

Confessions of an Opium Eater. The nursemaid of Charlotte Yonge used to terrify her with recitations of John Taylor's Melancholy Adventures of Poor Puss in a dark passage. Charles Dickens' nursemaid alarmed him with stories and had 'a fiendish delight in my terrors', dramatising her stories by clawing the air and issuing ghostly groans.Robert Lewis Stevenson's nurse had a 'strong and imaginative Scottish mind … steeped in Bunyan'. Although she was a committed Puritan and recited psalms, hymns, bible stories and 'tales of the suffering and death of the Scottish Covenanters', she also read to him from sensational Penny Dreadfuls.Their walks often took in the cemetery where she told terrifying ghoulish tales of Resurrection Men.2

The nurse's own life might also be drawn out by curious children; stories of previous charges, or their own home lives, or generational narratives. Upper-class memoirs of childhood recall regional voices of Somerset, Scotlandand London, and lives familiar through retelling but also exotic in their difference from the nannied environment of these privileged children.3 Sally, the nurse Edward Crowther later employed, may have given her charges insights into her upbringing at the Queen's Orphan School in Hobart's New Town, established to raise the children of convict women .4 The stories that Alice Gordon brought with her have not survived, but there is little doubt that they existed and were absorbed into the Crowthers-in-the-making; that they contributed to the fact that these children were, at least in part, 'nanny-made'.5

While Alice Gordon may have regaled her charges with stories from her past, she is likely to have soon absorbed and reiterated or rejected the stories that formed the Crowther ethos of which she was becoming part. Given the length of her service, these stories cannot have failed to have become part of her cultural identity in ways that both drew her in and excluded her.The house itself provided an intense imaginative

structure through which the identity of its inhabitants was defined. Every object at Albert Terrace was imbued with its own meaning, conferred because of its source or

2

Anthony Hale p. 163; Gathorne-Hardy, pp. 124, 289; pp. 63-4; 283.

3

Frances Partridge describes her nurse's origins as 'shrouded in legends connected with a very poor Dickensian life in the East End'. Gathorne-Hardy, pp. 26, 145

4 _{Mary Crowther Cree, Edith May, 1895-1974: life in early Tasmania, Toorak: James Street, 1983,}

passim.

5 _{Anthony Hale chastises biographers of the Irish writer Lady Augusta Gregory (b1852) who}

define her as 'self-made' because of the disregard and neglect she suffered from her parents. Hale describes Lady Gregory as nanny- rather than self-made. Hale, p. 163.

usage. Some of these objects were fetishised through generations. Each time it was stopped at, passed, sat beneath, drunk from or handled by servants, it served as a mnemonic for the enrichment and reinforcement of Crowtherness. 6

From the walls of the dining room Crowther ancestors oversaw formal meals and household prayers, establishing the progressive chain of upward mobility enabled by the industrial revolution: Robert Crowther, mill-owner and Mayor of Preston; Philip Wyatt Crowther, Comptroller of the Guildhall in the City of London; Dr William Crowther Senior, MRCS, emigrant to Tasmania and father to Alice Gordon's employer. Tables, whatnots, desks, sideboards, shelves and mantle-pieces were laden with objects imbued with meaning: the silver tea urn given to William Crowther Senior by citizens who supported his strong stance against the flogging of convicts; the piece of Cape Barren crystal he had sent to London for cutting, engraving 'with the arms of the Crowther family and set as a seal exquisitely '.7 Small bags of Californian gold dust, possibly the more innocent relics to be kept in the cedar bookcase in the surgery, provided the touchstone for a tale of entrepreneurial success.

Clearing afforested land granted to him with assigned convict labour, establishing saw mills, William Crowther, Alice Gordon's employer, had chosen his moment and used these resources for the fabrication of frame houses and shopfronts which he had transported to San Francisco in a chartered ship when the gold-rush began in 1849. His profits went towards buying the first schooner, Surf, and the fleet that grew from this was represented by paintings, ' hung as far as one could see' along the length of the hallway and landing walls of Edward Crowther's house – one presumes in a similar formation to their previous arrangement at Albert Terrace: Offley, Isabella, Sapphire,

Velocity , Elizabeth Jane and Marie Louise. Each of these provided a mnemonic for tales of adventure and exploration: of whaling, and gold, of storms and ice, reefs and

mutinies , of tales of imperial entitlement. En masse, united under the one flag, they

6 _{See Krasner's description of the object-filled home environment's function as both mnemonic}

and as a monument to memory. Krasner, pp. 209-10.

7

The Crowther stories, objects and rituals are, for the most part, drawn on Cree's family histories relating to Edward Crowther's household at Coreen. The objects I refer to are clearly inherited by Edward as the eldest surviving son, and would therefore have come from Albert Terrace. My extrapolations from Edward's household and rituals are based on Edward's position in the family as eldest son and the expectations that he follow more closely in his father's footsteps than the other children. He lived only a block or two away , was his medical partner and served with him in government (Cree Edith May, pp. 6-7; Emily Ida, p. 18). The crystal was described in the Courier: 'It surpasses anything of the kind hitherto found in any part of the world and shows in some measure the valuable sources of produce which these comparatively unexplored countries possess.'HTC, 30 January 1835.

boasted of the capitalist prowess of the paterfamilias, and his global reach. During the 1850s and 1860s, these ships were hunting and trading, for the most part in the Southern Seas, but also beyond. Six of them were whalers, but not exclusively so. The

Velocity, purchased in 1860, was employed in sperm whaling. The Offley also went to Kerguelen and Heard Islands to hunt sea elephants for oil. The Surf was sent to Valparaiso and the Marie Louise to equatorial Pacific Islands and the Coral Sea to harvest guano which had just been rediscovered as a wonder fertiliser.8

The 'overwhelming assertion of meaning' , the volume and presence of Crowther memorabilia, would have overshadowed Alice Gordon's own whenever she stepped out of the nursery.9 In stark contrast, the environment which she could personalise was minimal. Sharing a room with small children, a chest top, may have been the only place for displaying objects precious to her, and these could not be so delicate that they would not withstand being picked up, or pointed at, by the inquisitive hands and minds of the younger Crowthers. Things too precious, too private, had to be kept in the trunk she had brought out on the Constance , probably stashed under her bed, and brought out only in rare moments of privacy. Such objects, like her shipmate Annie Sach's prayer-book, would connect her to people left behind.

But the longer Alice Gordon lived at Albert Terrace, the more her stories and those of the Crowthers would intertwine, and new ones, based on shared experiences, would be introduced. Objects made for, with and by the children or other members of the

household would hold their own meanings, even if they were not displayed on the dining room walls or in the drawing room cabinet. Through mnemonics of daily movement and repetition Alice Gordon's identity would be inscribed with

Crowtherness. But her own strong personality would never be lost in this identification. At some point during her time with the Crowthers, Alice Gordon shed her first, girlish, name and adopted one with greater gravitas: Gertrude.

8

W E L H Crowther, 'An Account of the Life of my Father'; Cree, Edith May, pp. 9, 84-5, 102-4; W E L H Crowther, 'Crowther, William Lodewyk (1817 - 1885)', ADB, vol 3, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1969, pp. 501-503; Alan Villiers, Vanished Fleets; sea stories from old Van Diemens Land, Cambridge: Patrick Stephens, (1931), 1974, pp. 180-185. In 1865 Crowther formed the Anglo-Australian Guano Co. and obtained a lease for Christmas Island.

9 _{Krasner uses this phrase for the way the environment is represented as 'literally press[ing]}

Beyond the walls of the house, Hobart offered multiple significations that would trigger the retelling of family stories as well as opportunities for new ones. 10 Crowtherness was inscribed in the very landscape of the port town. A walk to the wharves would have brought the paintings in the hallway materially to life. One or more of the current Crowther fleet was likely to be moored at the far end where the stench of seeping whale oil was less likely to insinuate itself into the household goods being delivered by the trading barques. But what was present before their eyes could be augmented by other, earlier ships: the Cumberland that brought the first Crowthers to the colony and was later taken by pirates at sea; the Emu that had departed for England in 1839 with William and his menagerie of native animals that were sold on arrival and provided the money for his medical studies.11 The distance between the harbour and Albert Terrace was most easily bridged by a short-cut through St David's cemetery where the ironically worded epitaph of William Crowther Senior was to be seen on his tombstone beneath the central willows. 12 And two of the siblings of Gertrude Gordon's charges would have been buried here. William, the first born, had died aged eight, the year of his father's Californian venture, and would have been unknown to the younger children, but Eugene, not quite three, had died shortly before Gertrude Gordon joined the family, a palpable absence in the nursery, a gap between Caroline and Emmaline.

Not only the town but the mountain, too, was woven into the Crowther embrace and used to reinforce the family's fortitude. When he was apprenticed to his father (who 'was of indifferent health'), William walked over Mt Wellington to Huonville once a fortnight to visit patients. He continued to make the mountain his own, leading rescue parties in search of others who were less well acquainted with his territory.13 He

10

On Sunday afternoons Edward, sometimes with his brother Henry, took his children and dog for walks which became rituals of storytelling. Cree. Edith May pp. 20-21.

11 _{W E L H Crowther, 'Surgeon Apprentice and Naturalist: being incidents from the journal of}

William L Crowther during the voyage of the barque "Emu" from Van Diemen's Land to London dock, February 24-June 23, 1839', typescript, SLT Crowther Collection.

12 _{Mercury, 13 April 1885. William Crowther Senior's tombstone, inscribed with the words 'Not}

ignorant of evil himself, he learned to pity the wretched' now lies half-hidden in a flowerbed in St David's Park.

13 _{Nehemiah Bartley desribes being taken up by Crowther. They left one icy dawn in 1849, kitted}

with sandwiches and brandy. Neremiah at nineteen struggled to keep up as they clambered over trees and battled undergrowth. The purple dye from his soaked and shredded trousers stained his legs, the nails of his boots fell out (Nehemiah Bartley, Opals and Agates; or Scenes under the Southern Cross and the Magellans, Brisbane: Gordon and Gotch, 1892, pp. 8-10). In January 1858 Crowther led a search party for the Derwentwater's surgeon who had gone missing. The party included, among others, four unnamed Aboriginal men from one of the boats in harbour, two sons of Mrs Seal (who owned a whaling fleet), Dobson, Jr, and one of the Cotton sons. HTC, 29 January 1858.

frequently proved his prowess and tested the mettle of family and visitors alike by taking them hiking. His mother, on one such walk, had to be coaxed down with opium. Each occasion would have augmented the symbolic meaning of the mountain in the Crowther narrative.

Beyond Hobart and Mount Wellington, the experience of Crowtherness was augmented by the places they spent their holidays. At least once a year, the household travelled to Bushy Park, some 56km north of Hobart, where William Crowther's older sister

Elizabeth lived with her husband William Blyth, and their nine children. Summer visits were not the only ones. William Crowther probably attended the births of his nieces and nephews, and the visits he made when any of them were sick were commemorated by the children with this ditty:

Multiplication is vexation Cod liver oil as bad

Rubbing with ointment burns my throat And cold tea drives me mad.14

The matriarch on these holidays at Bushy Park was Sarah Crowther, William and Elizabeth's mother, who lived with both her children at different times. Her presence in the lives of her eighteen grandchildren in both households gave them a glimpse into a Georgian world, less restrictive of women, less anxious about emotional expression. It was Sarah who had ensured her daughter, as well as her son, was well educated, though it was only her female descendants who were required to balance boards on their heads for their deportment. It was Sarah's traits of energetic determination and entrepreneurship, so characteristic of her son, that made it possible for William to gain his medical education in England and Paris. During the economically and socially stormy years of her marriage, her collecting and taxidermy had been both a means to gaining vice regal acceptance and crucial to her son's advancement. She helped him prepare a collection of skins and stuffed native fauna which he took to England along with live birds and animals. There he sold them to the Earl of Derby, and the money derived paid for his medical training.15 Her own collection was extensive . When she had to dismantle

14

Beatrice Blyth, 'Reminiscences in a series of letters to Sir William Crowther, 1941. Photocopy, SLT Crowther Collection.

15 _{On the 13}th _{Earl of Derby's death in 1851, this impressive menagerie at Knowsley Park (1272}

it, probably after her husband's death in 1839, she presented some of her collection to Lady Jane Franklin, the Governor's wife, and sold the rest for £72. But she began again, and involved the children at Bushy Park in this passion for collecting, whether it was butterflies, bulbs, parrots or cucumber mullet. 16 Collecting was an integral part of being a Crowther, whatever age or gender.Gertrude Gordon would have been involved both in encouraging the nursery-aged children to find objects of interest, and in training them to discern their ever finer points of difference. In the taxonomic obsession that marked the Victorian age, these were objects through which lessons could be learned about the natural world, and the prerogative of humankind to discipline and arrange it.17

For a decade or more, Crowther's other commitments had thrown his scientific pursuits into abeyance, and he was not especially interested in the local Royal Society.18 But the prospect of a world stage was rekindling his enthusiasm. In 1862 he had shipped the lower jaw and teeth of a sperm whale to England to form the entrance to the Tasmanian Division of the London International Exhibition.19 This spectacular display